Strange things can happen in the weird and wonderful world of online chess, and one certainly did to me a couple of days ago, when I won a Lichess Blitz game in 7 moves. With Black. Against an IM! Now admittedly, this wasn't the world's strongest IM, and he did just put a piece en prise, but beating Africa's 122nd highest rated active player has to be some kind of achievement, surely? It is rather a big continent after all!!
This game got me thinking back to a day, many years ago (40 for goodness sake!), when I beat another IM (from Singapore), this time in "proper" chess. Though once again it may not have been the world's strongest IM - albeit that at 2310 he was more than impressive by my standards! The game is not one of my greatest moments, and it is almost certainly the luckiest win of my life. But so what? I won. Against an IM!!
My reward in the next round was to play Willie Watson, later a GM (and a man who played chess like a "drunk machine gunner", according to Boris Spassky) but who at that time was only rated 2320 and was not even an IM. To say that Lady Luck did not help me in consecutive rounds is something of an understatement!
I shall have to look more closely at my old games to see if there are any more IM scalps I can dredge up, but at the moment I'M struggling to think of any! Though I do recall a rather more convincing IM scalp being notched by Paul a few years back when he played a masterpiece to defeat Richard Palliser. A future Game of the Month, I think!
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